Cooperation
Preben Munch Nielsen
Copenhagen, Denmark... October 1943 – On April
9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark. The Germans
believed that the Danes shared their “Aryan” racial
qualities, so they imposed a less rigid occupation in
Denmark than they did in countries such as Poland.
The Danish government was allowed to remain in power,
and although it chose to cooperate with the Nazis, it
continued to protect the more than 7,500 Jews living
within its borders. Jewish citizens, who were located
mainly in the capital city, Copenhagen, were not stripped
of their rights, property, jobs, or security. Because the
Jewish population was small and had the support of the
Danish government, the Germans decided to postpone
the persecution of the Danish Jews until after they had
won the war.
In the spring of 1943, however, the situation
changed. Inspired by the Allies’ progress in the war,
the Danish people stepped up their resistance to
the German occupation. Labor strikes and acts of
sabotage intensified. On August 28, 1943, the German
military commander in Denmark declared a state of
emergency and commanded the Danish government
to institute martial law. Acts of sabotage were to be
punishable by death, the press was to be censored,
and demonstrations were to be banned. The Danish
government refused to accept these measures and
resigned. The presiding Nazi official, Werner Best, saw
this as an opportunity to begin the deportation of the
Danish Jews.
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, a German official stationed
in Denmark, leaked the news of the pending deportation
to Danish leaders, who informed the Jewish community.
On September 29, 1943 – the eve of Rosh Hashanah,
the Jewish New Year – the chief rabbi of Denmark
entered the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen, announced
the plans for the deportation, and told the congregants
to leave immediately, alert others, and go into hiding.
The arrests were set to begin on October 2, but they
would not be successful. The people of Denmark
– members of the resistance, church leaders, students,
policemen, physicians, ordinary citizens – spontaneously
came together to thwart the operation. Preben Munch
Nielsen, a high school student from Snekkersten, a
fishing village north of Copenhagen, was among those
who participated.
Preben had joined the resistance as a courier in 1940,
and he quickly became involved in the rescue operation.
A policeman came to his door and asked him to pick
up several Jews at a nearby train station and escort
them through the woods to the shore. They would be
smuggled by boat across the sound to Sweden (the
sound is the body of water they crossed). Preben
completed this mission and joined the Friends of the
Sound, a group of Danes based in Snekkersten that
coordinated the secret crossings to Sweden. A neutral
country, Sweden had agreed to accept the fleeing Jews
and encouraged its citizens to welcome them.
The Friends of the Sound used the Snekkersten Inn as
their headquarters. Many Jews hid at the Inn or in nearby
homes before being brought to waiting boats. Preben
and his friends worked with local fishermen to take up
to twelve Jews at a time across the four-mile stretch of
water. In less than a month, they ferried some 1,400
Jews to Sweden. Wanted by the Gestapo (German secret
state police), Preben fled to Sweden in November 1943.
He returned to Denmark when the war ended in May
1945. In the span of one month, October 1943, the
people of Denmark helped more than 7,200 Jews escape
to Sweden. Ultimately, about 100 Danish Jews died
during the Holocaust.
Cooperation
Dimitar Peshev
Sophia, Bulgaria… March 1943 – In January 1941,
Bulgaria passed anti-Jewish legislation modeled after the
Nuremberg laws that Germany had instituted in 1935.
The Bulgarian government felt that an alliance with the
Germans would enable the country to regain land it had
lost decades earlier. Persecuting the nearly 50,000 Jews
was a way to show common cause. Some Bulgarian
politicians, writers, intellectuals, and church leaders
protested the measures, but the government stood firm.
Germany saw that it had a loyal partner in Bulgaria and
welcomed the country into the Axis alliance in March 1941.
Dimitar Peshev, the deputy speaker of the Bulgarian
parliament, supported the anti-Jewish legislation.
He felt that Bulgaria’s alliance with Germany was in
his country’s best interests and that the anti-Jewish
measures were a shrewd move. The strategy proved
a success. In April 1941, Bulgaria participated in
the invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia and received
portions of each country in return. Another 11,000
Jews came under Bulgarian rule, more than 7,000 in
Thrace (annexed from Greece), and some 4,000 in
Macedonia (annexed from Yugoslavia). Over the next
two years, the Bulgarian government confiscated Jewish
property, forced Jews to wear yellow stars, and further
limited their rights. The government, however, took no
immediate steps to deport the Jews to killing centers.
The situation changed dramatically in February 1943.
Bulgaria agreed to Germany’s request to hand over
20,000 Jews from its territories. In March, Bulgarian
authorities arrested more than 11,000 Jews living in
the newly annexed territories, and German army units
deported them to the Treblinka killing center in Poland.
Because the Bulgarian government had not met the
quota of 20,000, it decided to deport Jews of Bulgarian
citizenship, namely the 8,000 living in the town of
Kyustendil near the Macedonian border. Word of the plan
spread and angered many of the non-Jewish residents.
A delegation of Bulgarians boarded a train for Sophia,
the capital, to protest the deportation. They were hoping
to enlist the support of Dimitar Peshev.
Although he had supported the anti-Jewish laws,
Dimitar had done so for practical reasons and he never
supported the deportation of Bulgaria’s Jews. He, too,
wanted to stop it. On March 9, 1943, he brought the
Kyustendil delegation, along with several parliament
members, to meet with the Minister of the Interior,
Petur Gabrovski. Gabrovski denied knowing about the
plan, but they knew he was lying and demanded that
he cancel the deportation. After a lengthy argument,
Gabrovski agreed to do so. Dimitar knew, however, that
the Jews were not out of danger.
On March 17, 1943, Dimitar wrote a letter to Prime
Minister Bogdan Filov in which he opposed any future
deportations of Bulgarian Jews. He convinced 42 of
his colleagues in parliament to sign the petition and
presented it to the prime minister. Filov was furious that
Dimitar organized such a public protest. The parliament
voted to remove Dimitar from his position as deputy
speaker. Soon thereafter, the government launched a
plan to deport all of the nearly 50,000 Bulgarian Jews
to Poland. Although Dimitar felt defeated, his actions
caused others to intensify their protests. Leaders of
the Bulgarian church sent letters to the prime minister
and to King Boris III. Prominent writers and intellectuals
spoke out, as did groups of lawyers, physicians, and
communists. This collective pressure led King Boris III
to alter his policy. Despite competing pressure from
the Germans, he prevented the deportations by having
many Bulgarian Jews assigned to forced labor units in
Bulgaria. As a result, no Jews of Bulgarian citizenship
were sent to their deaths in Poland.